


Helios

by deskclutter



Category: The Sandman
Genre: F/M, Romance, creepy relative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-22
Updated: 2010-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:41:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Orpheus reveals the truth of his parentage to his beloved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Helios

**Title:** Helios  
**Day/Theme:** February 24 / the clever son  
**Series:** Sandman  
**Character/Pairing:** Orpheus/Eurydice  
**Rating:** PG

  
"My father," he begins hesitantly. "He is called Oneiros."

"Shifter of form?" she repeats in puzzlement. "Does he change his shape, then, like water from the stream to the jug?"

"In a manner of speaking, but that isn't — no, what I mean to say is that he is not merely a changer of form — I'm not explaining this very well."

"Take your time," she urges with all the sweetness of a young woman in love. In love! Oh, to be in love, to ache this exquisitely glorious ache for eternity and beyond, to revel in the uncertain first blush and to feel it grow stronger and stronger until one could almost find the speed to catch Helios on his flaming chariot spurred on by the jubilant energy caught within one's breast!

He takes a breath, and she is mesmerized by the fall and rise of his chest beneath the thin cloth. What would it feel like under her hands, the chest of this boy who makes her heart speed up a tad, just the littlest bit into the arena of love? She shakes herself out of her reverie and listens. "It is simplest to put it as 'my father is the King of Dreams', but that is not the whole truth. My father is Oneiros, the Shaper of Form, but he is also the lord over Nightmare and Dream, and he is the wealth of stories in the world, as I am a minstrel, or the son of Calliope. But I am also Orpheus because I was named so, and I have made of myself all that Orpheus can be which includes being the son of Calliope and a minstrel boy. In that manner, my father is Dream, which is the sum of Oneiros, and the Prince of Stories, and the Lord of Nightmare and Dream and the other titles my father has accumulated over the years. Does-does that make sense?"

She wants to laugh at his sudden nervousness, but doesn't because she feels the slightest touch of nerves herself. A son of gods is what her lover is. Who is she to presume to love one as great as he? This boy whose nimble fingers could charm the Golden Fleece to fly itself from Colchian Ares to Athens in a day, whose clever voice spins into song the very stories he says his father is the prince over – in this day and age to be sired by a god is not so very uncommon, but even so…

But even so, love is not to be so easily relinquished, after all. "Yes," she tells him. "Yes, it does." His smile blossoms as the stars in the night do when Helios retires for the night, and she feels a wave of relief calm her as she drinks in the sight of his eyes, his face, his perfectly satisfactory smile.

He tells her he would pluck the stars from the sky for her, and he would rather die than live without her. He tells her that he would make her into song so that she would be with him always, thrumming and alive in his heart and in his ears. He tells her that his songs will be different, that they will all have happy endings, for how could he do less than that when she is by his side forever?

* * *

  
_An aside:_  
Gold eyes watch them from the depths of the heart. "Ah, the cleverness of youth," says the figure. "Even if the occasional push is required."

  
The figure walks towards a panel in the gallery. "Do not mistake me, brother sweet," it murmurs. "We're different as night and day – which is to say that while in certain ways we are alike, our fundamentals are completely different – but the boy is still family, after all."


End file.
